


Week 2:  Does Laurent know?  (Captive Prince meta)

by Mesa



Series: Five Weeks of Captive Prince Meta [2]
Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: M/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-11 23:51:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5646304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mesa/pseuds/Mesa





	Week 2:  Does Laurent know?  (Captive Prince meta)

Thanks to everyone who responded to my post last week – even the many who were not fully convinced by my arguments. As Jane Austen says, rational opposition is a compliment!

This week in _Captive Prince_ meta, I’m weighing in on the ever-fascinating question of whether or not Laurent knows Damen’s true identity by the end of Book 2.

### Sources

I swing back and forth between reading as many different opinions as I can, and avoiding them because I don’t want to be overly-influenced by other people’s interpretations. Nonetheless, some key sources that have certainly influenced my thoughts in this post:

  * “Laurent Knows: An Essay”, Josselin, <http://archiveofourown.org/works/>
  * _Captivated_ , Goodreads discussion thread, [https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1810998-after-reading-the-captive-prince—book-3-chapter-9—snippet-did-laur](https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1810998-after-reading-the-captive-prince%E2%80%94book-3-chapter-9%E2%80%94snippet-did-laur)
  * Various threads at Fail-Fandom Anon, such as:   
<http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/163726.html?thread=879515022#cmt879515022>[  
](http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/163726.html?thread=879515022#cmt879515022)[http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/137594.html?thread=721901690#cmt721901690  
](http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/163726.html?thread=879515022#cmt879515022)<http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/127308.html?thread=659596108#cmt659596108>



### What do we mean? 

In asking the question, _does Laurent know?_ we could mean a whole lot of different things. The key meanings, I think, are: 

  * Do I, as a _reader_ of Books 1 and 2, believe Laurent knows? 
  * Do _most readers_ of Books 1 and 2 believe Laurent knows? 
  * Does the author _intend_ for the reader to believe Laurent knows? 
  * Does it _make sense_ , within the context of the story and the characters, that Laurent knows? 
  * Does the story _work better_ if Laurent know?



The answers to some of these questions can easily contradict each other. And to engage in an interesting discussion with other people, it helps to know which perspective each person is answering the question from. 

Of course most of us are responding from the first perspective – do _I_ believe Laurent knows? For myself, what I believe is influenced by the last three questions – that is, my opinion will be influenced by what I think the author’s intent is, and how well it works both in terms of story structure and psychological realism. So for purposes of this discussion, I’m interested in other readers’ arguments mainly in terms of what they suggest about the author’s intent and whether it works. I’m hoping to look more generally at reader reactions to the book – in terms of reader expectations, genre fic, etc – in a later post. 

###  Prevailing opinions 

From what I’ve seen of other reader opinions, the most common belief is that Laurent does know Damen’s real identity. When I started looking at the main reasons for and against, I noticed a couple of patterns: 

  * Arguments that Laurent _knows_ tend to focus on the early part of the story – the period when Laurent first acquires Damen as a slave, and how he reacts. Readers point to specific words and actions, often in the early chapters of Book 1, that suggest Laurent is aware of Damen’s identity.
  * Arguments that Laurent _doesn’t know_ tend to focus on the later part of the story – as the relationship between Laurent and Damen evolves – and focus both on the ways they interact, and the structure of the narrative. 
  * In addition, arguments that Laurent _knows_ are often tied to reader reactions – that is, many readers finds their emotional investment in the story, or sympathy for Laurent as a character, tied to their belief that he knows. For the purposes of my discussion here, I want to set these consideration aside (I hope to come back to it in a later post though).
  * In contrast, arguments that Laurent _doesn’t know_ are more likely to look at the story structure and what makes sense in terms of narrative. This I do want to consider here.



###  My evolving thoughts 

As I mentioned earlier, I initially read Captive Prince in serialization as it was published. When Book 2 finished I remember being very confused – not so much about whether or not Laurent knew, but about whether or not I, as the reader, was supposed to _think_ that Laurent knew. That is, I found the author’s intent really unclear. 

On the whole, though, I leaned toward the view that Laurent didn’t know – or that readers were supposed to assume Laurent didn’t know. I remember being quite surprised when I realized how many readers are completely convinced of the opposite – that Laurent knows – though it still wasn’t clear to me whether the author meant for us to believe this or whether readers were picking up on something that came across in the story but wasn’t intended. 

###  The author’s intention 

When I went back and started reading the full story from the beginning, in one sitting, I quickly came to the conclusion that – at least at the outset – the reader is meant to believe Laurent knows. In this case I’m looking specifically at what the author intends to convey – not what is believable in a psychological reading of Laurent, and not what works best in terms of narrative structure, but what the author is trying to convey in words and inferences. The authorial clues and indications seem pretty unmistakeable to me. 

The most definitive one is this, right at the beginning: 

> _ Laurent had stopped dead the moment he had seen Damen, his face turning white as though in reaction to a slap, or an insult.  _

To me this was a clear authorial signal to the reader that Laurent recognizes Damen. When I read it, my immediate reaction was, OH, so the debate is over; I’m supposed to believe Laurent knows who Damen is. 

This was reinforced in a couple of other places in the first book. For example, in this exchange at the end of the whipping scene: 

> _ ‘I was on the field at Marlas,’ said Laurent.  _
> 
> _ As the words penetrated, Damen felt the world reshape itself around him.  _
> 
> _ ‘They wouldn’t let me near the front. I never had the chance to face him. I used to wonder what I’d say to him if I did. What I’d do. How dare any one of you speak the word honour? I know your kind. A Veretian who treats honourably with an Akielon will be gutted with his own sword. It’s your countryman who taught me that. You can thank him for the lesson.’  _
> 
> _ ‘Thank who?’ Damen pushed the words out, somehow, past the pain, but he knew. He knew.  _
> 
> _ ‘Damianos, the dead Prince of Akielos,’ said Laurent. ‘The man who killed my brother.’  _

Again, this seemed like a deliberate signal from the author to the reader that Laurent is punishing Damen’s for Damianos’ actions; it’s too much of a stretch to see any other reason for Laurent to reference Damianos at this moment. 

These kinds of juxtapositions appear regularly through both books – Laurent frequently makes references to Auguste and to Akielos’ royal family when he’s speaking to Damen. Many readers cite these connections as evidence that Laurent knows who Damen is. 

But while I think this is true earlier on – like in the example above – as the books progress, I find the signals less and less definitive, in terms of what we are expected to read in Laurent’s references. Again, I’m not talking here about what might realistically be going through Laurent’s head at this moment but about what the author is trying to convey to us about Laurent’s thought processes. 

Here’s an example for Chapter 4 of Book 2: 

> _‘You must have spent a lot of time in training,’ said Damen, and to his surprise Laurent answered him seriously._
> 
> _‘I was never a fighter,’ said Laurent. ‘That was Auguste. But after Marlas, I was obsessed with …’_
> 
> _Laurent stopped. Damen could see the moment when Laurent decided to continue. It was deliberate, his eyes meeting Damen’s, his tone subtly changed._
> 
> _‘Damianos of Akielos was commanding troops at seventeen. At nineteen, he rode onto the field, cut a path through our finest men, and took my brother’s life. They say—they said—he was the best fighter in Akielos. I thought, if I was going to kill someone like that, I would have to be very, very good.’_

Here it’s the way Laurent stops just before he would (clearly) have said, “killing Damianos”, and the way his tone “subtly changed” when he continues. It feels like the author is trying to tell us something. But this time I don’t feel like I have to believe the implication; I feel like she’s trying to make me suspect something, but it’s not clear what. It feels like a misdirect, somehow. 

In Chapter 14 I get that impression even more strongly: 

> _ ‘I wanted to tell you that, because you,’ said Laurent, as though he was forcing the words out, ‘You remind me of him. He was the best man I have ever known. You deserve to know that, as you deserve at least a fair … In Arles, I treated you with malice and cruelty. I will not insult you by attempting to atone for deeds with words, but I would not treat you that way again. I was angry. Angry, that isn’t the word.’ It was bitten off; a jagged silence followed.  _

What was Laurent angry about? It’s tempting to accept the implication that he was angry at _Damen,_ because he knew Damen killed his brother. Is that what the author wants us to think? It seems too obvious, too pat to me. And if this was really what Laurent meant, he would in effect be saying, “I treated you badly then because I was angry that you killed my brother. But I regret that now because I realize I wasn’t being fair.” I have a lot of trouble reading Laurent as thinking that way at this point in the novel. And again, it seems like an authorial misdirect to me; the most immediate interpretation is too simple, and she doesn’t really want us to read it that way. 

Another interpretation of this line is that Laurent was angry back then at the _Regent_ or, perhaps, the situation the Regent had put him in. This makes way more sense to me. At the time Damen arrives, Laurent is in a pretty bad place and it’s mostly because of his uncle. Laurent’s sense of betrayal and anger toward his uncle would have been as strong – maybe even stronger? – than his anger towards Auguste’s killer. 

(Which actually brings us to a larger and more central question, that I think we need to consider in Laurent’s motivation: Is he motivated more by hatred of Damianos/Akielos for the death of his brother, or by hatred of his uncle, for the abuse, the treachery, and the betrayal? I think what we see of Laurent suggests his overriding goal is to “win” against his uncle. But more of this when we get into the question of Laurent’s motivations. At this point, I’m still looking at authorial intent.) 

To be honest, it’s hard for me to point to really clear or concrete examples of “signals” from the author about Laurent’s awareness after the early part of Book 1. It’s actually striking how much murkier the author’s intent becomes after those first few chapters. I went from being convinced, in Chapter 1, that Freece was telling me Laurent knows, to being completely confused, and being able to read every cryptic comment Laurent makes in two completely different ways. And that, I have come to believe, is the point. I think Freece did intend, originally, to make Laurent’s awareness clear to the reader – but as she went along, she realized, for various reasons, that the story works better if this question is left up in the air. So she deliberately pulled back on the inferences – continuing to have Laurent make allusions and comments that suggest, on one level, that he knows, but at the same time ensuring they can be interpreted differently as well. 

I remember once when I was writing a serialized story; I knew from the outset what my end-game relationship was, and I had no intention of hiding that. But I realized early on that readers weren’t picking up on dynamics between the two characters and didn’t see their relationship coming. Once I realized that, I recognized that I had a chance to heighten the eventual “reveal” – it didn’t change any specific parts of the story, but I did deliberately hold back in some areas (for example, I didn’t show everything the two characters were thinking) to let the relationship stay slightly hidden, and control the eventual revelation to add a bit more drama to the story. 

My sense is that Freece made a similar decision early in her story – that the drama would be heightened if the reader is unsure how much Laurent knows. And for that reason, the signals in the later parts of the first book, and most of the second book, are much more confusing and indistinct than they are earlier on. 

This doesn’t actually help us answer the question of whether or not Laurent knows – it only suggests that the author doesn’t mean to clearly convey one answer or the other. I kind of wonder whether, as the writing progressed, Freece wanted both to heighten the tension of the narrative, _and_ to leave herself more flexibility, more scope to go either way, when she wrote the final book. 

###  What makes sense 

Now let’s forget the author’s intentions and look at what makes sense within the context of the story and the characters she created. This one is interesting because of course these should be the same thing – but as we all know, sometimes they’re not. An author can sometimes create a world or character with such strong internal integrity that it overrides the author’s own intention. While this can be the mark of a weak or inexperienced author – it doesn’t have to be. I often think that the classic example of this is actually Jane Austen’s _Mansfield Park_. So an author who finds this happening can consider themself in good company! 

Many, if not most, of the arguments that _Laurent Knows_ rely on this perspective – that Laurent’s actions only make psychological sense if he knows who Damen is. I don’t want to repeat all the arguments that have already been made, so let me summarize some of them quickly and simplistically like this: Laurent treats Damen cruelly and violently at the beginning of the story, and there is no evidence that he’s a particularly cruel or violent person, so he must have reasons for his treatment of Damen, and the only one that makes sense is that he believes Damen = Damianos. 

This is compelling, but I’m not completely convinced it’s the only possible interpretation.  I do agree, and think we need to accept, that Laurent’s initial rather sadistic treatment of Damen is not typical of how he treats other characters. (There is a part of me that says this could actually be a kind of a holdover from fanfic where “whump” for a favourite character is a common source of id-based satisfaction. But let’s leave those kinds of speculations aside.) 

We could surmise that Laurent’s violence toward Damen reflects his hostility to Akielons in general, who are after all, his sworn enemies. But as other readers have pointed out, he shows no such reaction to Erasmus, who is equally as Akielon. I think we have to conclude that there is something about either Damen himself, or Laurent’s situation in receiving Damen as a “gift”, that motivates this cruelty. 

I think this poster put it really well, in FFA (<http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/174665.html?thread=948591945#cmt948591945>): 

> _ 1) Damen is a captured enemy who was definitely part of the army fighting his brother when he was killed  _
> 
> _ 2) He’s a humiliating gift, there’s several nasty jokes from others about how the ice prince will finally bend over for this big, burly foreigner  _
> 
> _ 3) Damen isn’t a good slave/servant. He doesn’t think of himself like it, he doesn’t act in accordance with either of the culture’s images of how slaves should act, he mouths off…  _

Basically, I think there are a lot of things going on here that could make Laurent angry and frustrated enough to lash out at Damen, even if he doesn’t actually believe Damen is his brother’s killer:

First, as I mentioned, he’s in a pretty terrible situation at the beginning of the story. Looking at timelines – Auguste was killed six years before the story begins; and in Chapter 1 of Book 2, the castellan at Chastillon says, “ ‘ _He [Laurent] and his uncle came here a great deal together, in the year or two after Marlas. As he grew older, the Prince lost his taste for the runs here. He now comes only rarely to Chastillon_.’’ ’ I take this to mean that the Regent began (or continued?) his involvement with Laurent “a year or two” after Auguste died, and then lost interest in him about four years ago (when Laurent was about 16). So six years ago Laurent lost his father and brother, and four years ago he was abandoned by the uncle who he presumably believed loved him. And it’s probably been even more recently – maybe in the last year or so – that he’s realized his uncle is a serial pedophile AND is actively trying to usurp the throne from him. 

So Laurent’s pretty angry and frustrated to start with. Then he gets this rather horrendous gift from his sworn enemies, which is specifically intended as a “bed slave” – hard to imagine anything more offensive. Laurent’s upset about it before he even sees Damen the first time. And then the uncle who used, abused and betrayed him explicitly orders him to “value” the gift from his enemy. 

I can see where Laurent would hate Damen even without believing he killed Auguste. 

Another common argument is that Laurent must know who Damen is because Damen doesn’t act like a common soldier. I totally agree with the second part of this – Damen absolutely gives himself away every time he opens his mouth, and probably in the way he carries himself as well. And Laurent, for his part, doesn’t treat Damen anything like a slave, right from the beginning – he spends way too much time talking to him, insulting him, trying to provoke him, trying to get information out of him. There’s no way that Laurent believes Damen is a common soldier. 

I think Laurent immediately recognizes that Damen isn’t a trained slave like Erasmus, probes into what led to his enslavement, and reaches a pretty accurate conclusion – that Damen was of high rank, was close to Kastor in some way, and did something to antagonize Kastor and cause Kastor to want revenge against him. But again, I think this can all be true and not force us to the conclusion that Laurent knows exactly who Damen is. When Damen later tells him the story about Jokaste betraying him for Kastor, I think that solidifies exactly what Laurent originally suspects – i.e. that Damen was a member of the royal inner circle and was given to Laurent as a form of vengeance or revenge on Kastor’s part. All of which intensifies Laurent’s conviction that Damen represents the enemy and that being “gifted” with him is a huge insult. 

Which, interestingly, is actually consistent with how Laurent’s first reaction to Damen is described - _as though in reaction to a slap, or an insult_. 

So in summary … I think it can be argued convincingly that Laurent recognizes Damen as Damianos from the outset – but I also think it’s possible to make a compelling argument that Laurent only recognizes part of the truth about Damen – not all of it. 

And I think this flows through to the rest of the story – you can make compelling arguments both ways for pretty much all of Laurent’s interactions with Damen … right up to sleeping with Damen the night before Damen is supposed to leave. Although, leaving aside all of the other aspects of the question, I do find it hard to believe that Laurent, given his development in the context of this story, and given where he is at Chapter 19 in Book 2, and given that he has, up until now, only had sex with one other person … would knowingly and willingly have sex with Damianos, prince-killer. 

###  If Laurent knows … 

One more point before I leave the question of what makes sense for Laurent. This is something I haven’t seen other readers raise (though perhaps they have and I’ve just missed it), but it bothers me continually: If Laurent actually knows who Damen is from the beginning – why doesn’t he just say so? What could possibly have stopped him from saying, the first time he sees Damen, “Holy shit, Kastor just sent me Damianos as a gift!” 

I’m sure someone is going to point out something obvious that I’ve missed, but the main reasons I can come up with myself are: 

  * Laurent always plays his cards close to his chest, so when he realizes something critical his first instinct is always to hide it, never reveal what he knows. That’s true, but he’s only human! He’s been dreaming of revenging himself on his brother’s killer for years – and here the man is, tied up and presented to him as a gift. What possible value is there in pretending not to recognize him?



… and/or … 

  * The Regent is forcing him to keep quiet, because the Regent made a promise to Kastor and the Vere/Akielos alliance is dependent on the Regent not revealing that Kastor actually betrayed Damianos. This one gets a bit complicated. The Regent might have made a deal with Kastor, but why should Laurent support him? He has no interest in shoring up the Regent’s alliance with Akielos. And no one in Vere – not even the Regent’s councillors – could possibly blame Laurent if he just said, “Hey, this is Damianos, he killed my brother and now I’m going to take my revenge on him.” What Veretian would blame him for that? Laurent could easily find someone who was at Marlas to verify Damen’s real identity, and then all of Vere would be on his side if he publicly tortured or executed him. Even if Laurent held off initially, why not reveal it when the Regent used his treatment of Damen as an excuse to strip him of power? It would have been the perfect defence.



Even if I could sort of accept, for the purposes of the story, that there might be some complicated Veretian political reason why Laurent wouldn’t reveal Damen’s identity right at the beginning … the question returns toward the end of Book 2, when Laurent and Damen are obviously growing close. If Laurent found himself growing attached to Damen, and he knew that Damen=Damianos, why wouldn’t he confront him with the truth at some point along the way? 

I’ve seen arguments that Laurent is somehow in denial or deliberately “compartmentalizing” himself so he doesn’t need to confront his own feelings for his brother’s killer. But what about towards the end, when he’s deliberately trying to hurt Damen as much as possible by telling him the truth about Kastor and Theomedes – why does he hold himself back at that moment and not also point out that he knows who Damen is, and that he’s talking about Damen’s father? Some readers suggest that Laurent using this information about Theomedes to hurt Damen is evidence that he knows who Damen is – but if so, what stops him from saying that he knows who Damen is at this point? 

And failing that – what about right at the end, when Laurent leaves Damen holding Ravenel and about to receive Akielon troops as reinforcement? Surely, if Laurent knows who Damen is, he can foresee that Nikandros will recognize Damen and can also foresee the turmoil this is about to create. Why would he deliberately leave that much chaos up in the air at such a crucial moment? (For that matter, why on earth wouldn’t Laurent tell Damen who the reinforcements would be even if he doesn’t know Damen’s identity? It really makes no strategic sense at this point, when he needs to leave Damen in charge of the fort and the troops.) 

The longer the situation goes on, the harder it is for me to see why Laurent continues to maintain the fiction, if he’s really known since the beginning. Another alternative interpretation could be that Laurent is gradually coming to the realization, but didn’t know from the beginning. That makes sense, but seems inconsistent with the authorial intent perspective, where the strongest signals that Laurent knows are earlier in the story. 

###  What works best for the story 

I think this takes us to the third (and final) perspective I want to consider the question from: what works better for the story? As I said, I think Freece bought herself a bit of flexibility by the end of Book 2. And in terms of what might be most realistic within the context of the story, I could probably be convinced either way. So what makes sense in terms of the structure and narrative arc of the story? 

Some readers have argued that Laurent’s character development only works if he knows who Damen is. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Laurent’s growth (like Damen’s) has been around his personal biases and prejudices about his enemy. At the beginning, he can believe all the worst possible things about Damen purely on the basis that Damen is an enemy warrior – a representative of the Akielon ruling/warrior class. Over the course of the story Laurent learns to separate Damen as a person from all the terrible things he has heard about Akielos, and judge him on his own actions (just as Damen learns to do with Laurent). I think that can all apply without Laurent knowing Damen’s real identity. 

If Laurent really knows all along, the main impact on the story is that – as many readers have pointed out – it will rob the reader of a satisfying dramatic revelation. Yes, Laurent is smart and shrewd and the story is not going to work if readers suddenly see him as kind of dense for missing the obvious. But the book has clearly been building to some kind of major confrontation between Laurent and Damen about Damen’s identity from the beginning – Jord’s discovery and threat to reveal the truth added to that tension, and the cliff-hanger at the end of Book 2 very specifically adds to the anticipation. Surely having Laurent say “Yes, I knew that” would have to be highly anti-climactic. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I think it will be very tricky to pull off well, if that’s the route Book 3 chooses. 

There is one more argument I want to explore on this question, and that is what the “snippets” from Book 3 suggest. But I will put that off till next week, when I plan to speculate wildly about where I think the story may go in Book 3. 

 

Whew! That was a long one … and strangely it still feels like I barely scratched the surface. As always, I’m happy to hear other thoughts. And I’ll be back next week with Book 3 speculation.


End file.
